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I’ve been working very closely with startups and budding entrepreneurs over the last few years, and realised that while most founders have passion for what they do, they sometimes struggle with economics and even the simplest financial issues. Some may not be aware of the financial benefits offered by the government, companies, and accelerators and may lose out on some low-hanging fruit due to lacking sufficient knowledge about finance.

There’s a lot said about the conservative nature of investors in the UK and Europe compared to our friends in Silicon Valley or New York - and it’s not all unfounded. But I’ve been on both sides of the fence, so I know it’s not all the fault of timid investors. We entrepreneurs are doing several things wrong.

While the UK media may portray that there is a lot of funding, mentoring and support for startups in the UK, the reality is less positive. Serial entrepreneurs and those with strong personal networks have done well, but the rest of us are struggling; several startups have attempted to scale, have shut down due to lack of funding, and have also left some entrepreneurs in financial distress.
Please sign the petition here if you agree with the points highlighted below.

Unfortunately many people in the start-up space do not understand the difference between PRODUCT and SERVICE start-ups. User/revenue traction is the standard investment criteria used by most investors. Product start-ups come with inherently higher risk, and investors don't like risk even though they want to have high returns. This is the reason why we don’t see product start-ups like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter coming out of the UK. Start-ups that get funding are usually service start-ups. We at CityFALCON have had to spend 9 months on building our product!
So what’s the difference between a product and a service start-up.

Let’s look at how much money did the UK “unicorns” raise in seed rounds i.e. pre-Series A. Unfortunately, not all companies have disclosed how much they have raised, and so below are only the companies where such information is available. If you have info for any other companies, ping me and I'll add it to this post.